MSM Smears Sanders For Saying MSM Smears Sanders

Mass media narrative managers have been throwing a fit ever since Senator Bernie Sanders criticized The Washington Post for providing unfair coverage of him at a New Hampshire town hall on Monday.

“Anybody here know how much Amazon paid in taxes last year?” Sanders asked the crowd.

“Nothing!” the crowd answered back.

“See, and I talk about that all of the time, and then I wonder why The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, doesn’t write particularly good articles about me. I don’t know why,” Sanders said.

The reaction has been swift and furious. Outlets ranging from NPR to CNN to Fox News have claimed that Sanders’ comments are “Trump-like” and “echoing Trump”. CNN’s segment on the story insinuated multiple times that there is no evidence for Sanders’ claims of biased coverage by WaPo.

“Sen. Sanders is a member of a large club of politicians — of every ideology — who complain about their coverage,” reads a statement by WaPo Executive Editor Marty Baron. “Contrary to the conspiracy theory the senator seems to favor, Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest.”

All of these people are lying. During the hottest and most contentious point in the 2016 presidential primary, Fair.org documented the fact that The Washington Post published no fewer than sixteen smear pieces about Sanders in the span of sixteen hours. This sixteen-hour window included Sanders’ debate with Hillary Clinton in the tightly contested state Michigan, where Sanders went on to score a narrow but hugely significant upset victory. To say that WaPo has a history of bias against Sanders is not conspiratorial, Trumpian or lacking in evidence, it’s an intellectually honest acknowledgement of an undeniable and well-documented fact.

As of this writing I have not yet seen a single one of the outlets decrying Sanders’ comments about The Washington Post make any reference at all to those sixteen WaPo smear pieces in sixteen hours. This is journalistic malpractice, as is the suggestion that there is no evidence of bias in WaPo’s reporting about Sanders. While huffily protesting the insinuation that a plutocrat-owned media outlet might not give honest coverage to a politician campaigning on the taxation of plutocrats, these media industrial complex narrative managers are themselves churning out dishonest coverage. They’re doing the thing that they insist they don’t do.

Some have gone so far as to call Sanders’ self-evident and completely undeniable accusation of bias “dangerous”.

Of course, what is actually dangerous is placing blind faith in a mass media institution for no reason other than to prevent that institution’s representatives from getting outraged and indignant when you don’t.

There is no legitimate reason to give mass media institutions the benefit of the doubt in any area whatsoever; their outrage and indignation is based on nothing other than their own self-appointed position as arbiters of truth and reality. There is no law that says plutocratic media must be trusted by the public and praised by politicians, and if there were that law would belong in the toilet. Their whole entire argument, when you boil it right down, is that nobody should distrust the mass media because when they do it hurts the mass media’s feelings. This is not a valid argument to make.

This is especially true of The Washington Post, which is wholly owned by a CIA contractor and never discloses this conflict of interest when reporting on the US intelligence community as per standard journalistic protocol. This same CIA contractor, who is also the wealthiest plutocrat in the world, sits on a Pentagon advisory board and is according to some experts working to control the underlying infrastructure of the entire economy. To suggest that a newspaper that is owned by such a figure has in any way earned the benefit of the doubt is insane. The world’s most adept plutocrat did not invest in the purchase of The Washington Post because he expected newspapers to make a profitable resurgence. That did not happen.

All plutocrats, once their wealth control grows to a certain size, begin buying up narrative control to ensure the perpetuation of the status quo they’ve built their fortune upon. They all have public relations firms, many of them fund influential think tanks, many use corporate lobbying and advertising incentives, some buy up media shares, and some buy up entire media outlets. Bezos did the latter.

No branch of the US government could get away with holding the stated position that they are entitled to the trust of the public and that any distrust is dangerous and unfounded. The entire system of checks and balances built into the US governmental system are there solely out of a distrust of unchecked power. Unchecked power of course exists in America, but no branch of its government could ever get away with openly claiming that the total trust of the public is their property that they own. Yet this is exactly what the talking heads of the plutocratic media do whenever any public figure on the left or the right has the temerity to claim that they are untrustworthy. They demand more trust than the government despite their inseparable entanglements with the same plutocratic class that is deeply entangled with that same government.

Many journalists – either for self-serving reasons or due to genuine befuddlement – are completely misinterpreting Bernie's media critique. The person who explained it most clearly was Noam Chomsky in this 90-second answer to an equally confused BBC host. This will clear it up: pic.twitter.com/AgznEp3LB1

Journalist Glenn Greenwald pushed back against the public freakout of these narrative managers by tweeting a popular Noam Chomsky video with the caption, “Many journalists – either for self-serving reasons or due to genuine befuddlement – are completely misinterpreting Bernie’s media critique. The person who explained it most clearly was Noam Chomsky in this 90-second answer to an equally confused BBC host. This will clear it up:”

“I’m just interested in this because I was brought up like a lot of people, probably post-Watergate film and so on to believe that journalism was a crusading craft and there were a lot of disputatious, stroppy, difficult people in journalism, and I have to say, I think I know some of them,” British journalist Andrew Marr is seen saying in the video in objection to Chomsky’s criticisms of the media.

“Well, I know some of the best, and best known investigative reporters in the United States, I won’t mention names, whose attitude towards the media is much more cynical than mine,” Chomsky replied. “In fact, they regard the media as a sham. And they know, and they consciously talk about how they try to play it like a violin. If they see a little opening, they’ll try to squeeze something in that ordinarily wouldn’t make it through. And it’s perfectly true that the majority – I’m sure you’re speaking for the majority of journalists who are trained, have it driven into their heads, that this is a crusading profession, adversarial, we stand up against power. A very self-serving view. On the other hand, in my opinion, I hate to make a value judgement but, the better journalists and in fact the ones who are often regarded as the best journalists have quite a different picture. And I think a very realistic one.”

“How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are-” Marr objected.

“I’m not saying you’re self-censoring,” Chomsky replied. “I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”

WaPo’s executive editor can try to pin the label “conspiracy theory” on these observations all he likes, but there is no reason to believe that it is pure coincidence that the plutocrat-controlled media display a consistent bias in favor of the status quo upon which those plutocrats have built their respective empires. This doesn’t mean that Jeff Bezos is personally on the phone with Washington Post reporters all day telling them what to write and what not to write, but to suggest that the man signing everyone’s paychecks from the very highest level has no way of exerting any influence at all upon the publication’s overall output is just silly. Again, the man bought The Washington Post for a reason, and it wasn’t to sell newspapers.

The public should be far more skeptical of the mass media, not less. Ignore their shrill, baseless objections and continue exposing them for what they are.

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Over a dozen years ago, I came to the realization that TV, newspapers, and magazines are the primary cogs in the brainwashing machine used against humanity. Whereas I was once a voracious consumer of the mainstream media before that realization, I have since abandoned it completely. Instead I have focused on discovering who it is that is so interested in controlling the narrative and brainwashing us all. That is the key to the whole problem humanity has suffered for millennia, because that’s how long this has been going on. Of course, before the printing press it was religion that was the primary cog in the brainwashing machine, but the question of who is behind controlling the narrative and brainwashing the masses was still applicable. It turns out that what defines these controllers throughout the ages is their psychology, which has a definite genetic basis, which is why they try to reproduce among their own kind. They are a very small percentage of the human population, yet they dominate the positions of power and control in human society. They have been labelled in the past as the morally insane, the psychopaths, the sociopaths, and are now gently called ASPDs, for Anti-Social Personality Disorder. They have been correctly identified as intra-species predators, yet humanity has no defense in place to guard against the enormous damage these individuals do to it. We are completely at their mercy. Unfortunately for us, they have no empathy and are thus incapable of mercy.

Anachronis/August 15, 2019

glider/August 15, 2019

I don’t favor Chico’s contention that psychopaths tend to reproduce w their own kind, which sounds like an anti-semite allusion. However, it is not a stretch to theorize that various characteristics of our brains are inheritable as its basic structure is coded by DNA that is variable in the population. With the brain largely a black box at this stage your request of citation proof is impossible. There are however some examples of some linkage even with crude 23andMe type data, e.g. https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/new-research-genetics-empathy-relates-autism/

HelenB/August 15, 2019

The immediate cry of the challengers to your hypothesis is always “show me the science” (as if science was an indisputable truth). Of course, that is ridiculous. We all know to whom you refer. “Show me the numbers!” Should be the request. I’m asking “show me one major news outlet that is NOT owned/controlled by those sociapaths to which you allude. Just one. Any one. Even at the BBC – a British Government owned media outlet – the five top executives are of the ilk, and the sixth is a major public supporter. The narrative is well and truly controlled. And we could go on and on with the various extensions of power wielding businesses and industries that have been taken over using the explosion of fiat currency emanating out of the US and Europe in what is virtually a global takeover. And we were asleep at the wheel. To say otherwise is disingenuous piffle.

glider/August 14, 2019

This CNN piece is pathetic. Imagine the meeting these people had with their manager to organize a response to Sanders speaking an obvious truth. I wonder if any of these bootlickers felt uncomfortable enough to squirm just a bit in their seats. Truly disgusting!

George Carver/August 14, 2019

I occasionally check the “news” programs on NPR/PBS (an empty stomach is required), to get an idea of what my sweet mother has been mainlining (someone who lived through J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy thinks Muellertime saved our “democracy” from Putin). The conceit that they’re listener/viewer-supported is evil/false/genius. With vocal lift/fry that makes my skin crawl, they authoritatively shill for some of the worst advertisers in America. The New York Slimes’ current pity appeal has nothing on them; nor does the Washington Compost’s “democracy darkness” thing. Thank you, Caitlin, for all the disinfecting sunlight.

Khatika/August 14, 2019

I have always said Sanders was not really all that popular with democrats in 2016.. He was the anyone but Hillary candidate just as Trump is the anyone but Hillary president.. That is why we see his poll numbers so low when there are now other choices. The MSM must smear someone. Sanders is just the choice of the moment. Tulsi Gabbard was the target last week. Whose next I wonder.

Truth first/August 14, 2019

Up here in mild mannered Canada the people pay for a national broadcaster that routinely misleads us. Not that they lie directly however they do omit crucial info that would result in a well informed public. Of course they claim to be objective truth tellers while at the same time many of us now understand how deceptive they really are.

cutthecord/August 14, 2019

Michel Bélisle/August 14, 2019

No surprise there. Three women smearing Mr Sanders. It seems that we are living in a world of capitalistic barbies.

But all of that is of course a big show.

The business world is the real master of this world. In 2000, there have been huge protests against the business world by anti-globalization protesters but thank you to 9/11 (probably organized by this same business world) the respect due to the business world made a strong come back.

I have really really really really seen enough of all the bullshit.

Fortunately, many prophecies are telling us the return of Jesus and the Final Judgement are very very near. It could be any day now.

I can’t wait for that moment and I pray the Rosary to hasten the return of Jesus because it has become unbearable and I am fed up.

The earth itself seems not able to bear it anymore with extreme weather, volcanoes, earthquakes and all the rest.

Charles Robinson/August 14, 2019

I am bigger now at 66. Beer all beer. I am just a big mass protoplasm you Mother Fucker! No, just beer. I was just using a figure of speech. Ok? You Mother fuckers! Just kidding. I was only kidding! Jeese. I am just pissed! But really, who would fuck a mother? Hopefully her husband.

Roy/August 14, 2019

Charles Robinson/August 14, 2019

When Jews, Zionist fake Jews, or otherwise, actually care about Palestinians as Human Beings and the rest of us also as the same, then and only then will I give a shit about “Jews” Fuck Obama, this Fucking house slave, this corporate Uncle Tom. Oh, that is what you are too Jerry Seinfeld, do you support the military industrial complex saying that only Hitler is evil? But nooooooooooo, not Israel killing the Palestinians to steal Palestinian land. Have a cup of coffee you Fuck while these innocents die for Israeli lies.

HelenB/August 15, 2019

Hitler provided his followers with a radio that had only one channel that spouted nothing but his opinions, comments, positions etc. Our MSM has very few very rich owners that tell you what they want you to believe. That is why I stopped watching that idiot box many many years ago. The MSM will never tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth; they do not know, nor do they ever want to know, just how to do that. It is all propaganda and marketing to the ignorant masses.

Beverly/August 14, 2019

In the early 1930’s it was easy to control the narrative, as Caitlin so beautifully says. There was no TV and no internet. There was the press and radio that was still in its infancy. All Hitler and Goebbels had to do is have party people in all major newspapers and take control of the national radio.

Today we are facing a similar challenge. While we still gave the internet as a true alternative to the bombardment of the official narrative, the American media landscape is now controlled by six major multinational corporations. As Caitlin points out in her article, the plutocrats, or oligarchs, seek to control the narrative to protect their empires within the Empire. Since they are all part of the same club, even if they might have different opinions on certain issues, on all important core issues they repeat the official narrative to manufacture consent.

Long gone are the glory days of the Fourth Estate, the only profession specifically mentioned in the Constitution, to monitor the government and guard freedom and democracy. No more Orson Wells, no more Gregory Peck, no more Bob Woodward and exposing the Watergate affair. Since Bill Clinton allowed for media mergers on a grand scale, the media was neutered and turned into a propaganda tool for the NeoLibcon fascists…. fascists because it is a corporate government engaged in imperial conquest.

HelenB/August 15, 2019

Spare me the “Hitler” BS. He did amazing things for his nation. The global narrative was controlled by the chosen ones even then, and most definitely post war. If you really knew what happened, you would be incandescent. That was the last attempt by a national leader to reject the take-over.

RC - Garrs/August 14, 2019

Swearington/August 14, 2019

MSM Smears Sanders for [Fill-in-the-blank] —————————- Probably a computer looking at polls and saying we need 3.2% more smears on Sanders this week. He’s still too popular. If its not one thing this week, then its something else. —————————- Actually, what I loved about this is that I had absolutely no idea that WaPo had smeared Sanders. That means my Ignore WaPo filter is working at 100% today!!!

ZakheimWolfowitz/August 14, 2019

“I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.” John Quincy Adams: “Go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Caitlin, Thanks!! MSM is feeling the Bern:-) (re: ‘MIC is the glue that holds the empire together’): Col Lawrence Wilkerson: “The National Security State (MSM, MIC, CIA, Dems, GOP) is a Status Quo that is undivided. There is no difference between Pelosi & McConnell. War is what sustains the Plutocracy; Greed of the Few for the Few.” Wilkerson states Progressives are the only HOPE. Diplomacy not War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYPHcLa9YAc Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson Keynote MA PeaceAction 2019 – Wilkerson reveals a lifetime of insight. Really worth the view, review, review, until you actually GET IT. You will never view the Status Quo trajectory complacently again……. In another piece about the Nefarious Cheney he says it always dumbfounds him that people think Presidents know much outside of what their Intel managers brief them on each day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK-VJR-PIEE Cheney & Far Right Lead Republicans Over A Cliff

cutthecord/August 14, 2019

BDS the corporate presstitutes. that includes paying-no-attention. let them shrivel up and blow away.

by the way, do you know that your search results at Amazon do not serve your interest? Amazon routinely shows you most expensive choices when there are much cheaper offerings for the same item. do internet-wide searches, and you’ll find the same item at a fraction of the Amazon price.

Zo/August 14, 2019

Charles Hugh Smith looks at implications for how the exercise of power actually works in the western empire. So exploiting vulnerable girls served the “national interests” and therefore it’s all OK. If we’re supposed to believe this is the heart of the matter, how is America any different from a corrupt developing-world kleptocracy organized to gratify a handful of oligarchs and their cronies? Or perhaps the “he was an intelligence asset” is just a tissue-thin cover for a much more destructive reality: those at the top of the American state have no moral compass at all. That honeypots and blackmail are standard-issue tools of spycraft targeting individuals in the employee of other nations is a given, but presumably the CIA doesn’t recruit 14-year girls as bait (although nothing should surprise us at this point)… Many of us sense an existential crisis is close at hand, and the U.S. is ill-prepared for such a crisis. Possibilities broached by others include a global war, a break-up of the U.S. into regional states, or a civil war of some sort. My bet is on a moral and financial crisis in which the ruling elites and the federal state lose their legitimacy, i.e. the consent of the governed. As their Federal Reserve “money” loses value and the corruption of the ruling elites and the government they control reaches extremes, the citizenry will no longer heed their corrupt, self-serving “leaders.”http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2019/08/who-protected-epstein-for-decades-and.html

What has been turning over in my mind in the hours before dawn today is the question of how high in the global power structure Jeffrey Epstein was (or even “is”). The official story is that he was a very high class playboy pimp to global elites with a network of powerful “friends”, like Clintons and UK royals, and Al Gorem and Ehud Barak and ad nauseum. We know that Wexner of Victoria’s Secret just handed over hundreds of millions of dollars of assets to Epstein to “manage”. Wexner looks like Gollum. What’s up with that? It is there to observe that Epstein was at a fulcrum of vast global influence on the workings of the gigantic machinery of empire. What pay-grade does that make him? Above or below Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney? I ask because it is a big question how protected the upper levels of elite imperial functionaries are. How protected do they have to be, and how secure in that protection, to do the horrific crimes they do every day, entitled by their positions? How does that protection get proven to them? The Clintons remain quite protected, though the list of Arkancides below is pretty damned long. It seems that the first Epstein story is that he suicided in prison, and everybody is scoffing at that, for all of the right reasons. It never happened in that facility before. He was their highest value prisoner, and the sheets are made of heavy toilet paper. The back up story is obviously “Arkancide”, that the hand of power reached out and snuffed Jeff to shut off the court discovery that has started to reveal his blackmail evidence on so many elite functionaries of power, whose purview includes ordering fancy hits. There is another, perhaps even more disturbing possibility, which is that Jeffrey Epstein is high enough in the works of the real machinery of power, that he has to be elaborately saved from all consequences, to keep others at his level assured enough to keep doing their ugly jobs.

Here is a site that Tom got an image from yesterday. https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/coixpt/i_have_nothing_witty_to_say_other_than_this_whole/ You see the image on the site, and can look at the images below, one of which is the same, as I send this. The other is the image the site had yesterday. The faces on yesterday’s image don’t look the same when you examine specific anatomic details, like ear creases, nose shape and eyebrows. I found the ears particularly different. Today’s pictures look about the same. One is a fresh photo, and the photo on the gurney has been mirror flipped and maybe photo-shopped a tiny bit. What are the implications if Jeffrey Epstein was a highly enough talented functionary of imperial power to make it worthwhile to murder a body double on a tight time schedule, sneak Epstein out of a monitored jail cell and sneak the freshly killed body in, to discover and fail to resuscitate? What are the implications for New York? What for the US? What for the poor Coroner, who has yet to release a report, and seems to be getting a lot of help-and-advice? Most folks know how JFKs autopsy was faked, moved from doctors in Dallas, to a military hospital in Bethesda, with inexperienced doctors doing it, and generals in the room. Pictures of the wounds were swapped out and so on. https://www.fff.org/2018/09/14/military-fraud-in-the-jfk-autopsy/ I am very interested in how much proof is going to be provided that the corpse is that of Jeffrey Epstein. If that is not absolutely proven in multiple ways, I will not believe that it is. “DNA report” is not going to convince me. Fingerprints, dental x-rays, close up photos not photo-shopped, body measurements, hands, all those details are important for independent and widespread verification of identity.

Slavecraft, Roadmap for Erotic Servitude– Principles, Skills and Tools That’s one of 3 similar titles that were on an Amazon receipt, addressed to Jeffrey Epstein, in Jeff’s trash, a decade or so ago, when it got searched. Master-slave relationship psychology is pretty fancy reading. Who are slaves and who are masters in any hierarchy? It’s relative to position, right? There are class divides, too. What kind of “master” does it take to really master this kind of arcane network? Epstein appears to have been uniquely talented; maybe still is…https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jeffrey-epstein-sex-slave-bdsm-books-amazon-870612/

It’s terribly tempting to want to feed the hungry proletariat the meal they desire. But each of those comics you mention have all made me laugh hard. Much of late night comedy now sadly is remarkably interchangeable. Don’t despair https://t.co/MePoHPzcJq

@RobSchneider This is exactly why I reserve a special hatred for comedians like Bill Maher, Steve Colbert, Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah who sell their talent to the churning out of propaganda for establishment power structures. https://t.co/vTVPNe3kU8

Excerpt from "Mainstream 'Centrists' Pose The Greatest Ideological Threat To Us All":

People like Ashton Kutcher imagine that the so-called “center” is called that because it sits smack dab in the middle of the ideological spectrum between communism and fascism, right in that moderate sweet spot that respects capitalism and private ownership without flying off the deep end into Nazi-like tyranny. In reality, the status quo exists entirely outside any left-right paradigm. It’s neither “left” nor “right” to give total control of the western world to an alliance of plutocrats and opaque government agencies who seek to expand their power and wealth by destroying our ecosystem, waging endless wars, and gradually shoring up more and more control of their citizenry via internet censorship, surveillance and police militarization. It’s just crazy.

I’m picking on Ashton not because he occupies some special place in all this, but because he doesn’t. He’s just an illustration of how blind people have become to the real threat that’s right in front of them, and how normalized insanity has become.

People who identify as “left” see the ruling power establishment as right-wing, people who identify as “right” see the ruling power establishment as left-wing, and people who identify as “center” see themselves as moderates whose normal, healthy way of life is under threat by the “far right” and “far left”. But really all that’s happening is a few assholes fucking over everyone else, which is no more “left” or “right” than a terrorist attack. The left versus right argument doesn’t even make sense until this far more pressing issue has been resolved. A Bernie supporter and a Trump supporter are arguing about left versus right while trapped in a room with a tiger who’s eating them both alive.